After seemingly being done for many days, or weeks, Kevin Willard to Villanova was made official Sunday. 65 wins and 39 losses over three seasons with the Terps, he finished 27-9 this year with a 14-6 conference record, earned a 4 seed in the tournament and went to the Sweet 16.

But he pissed off a lot of MD fans for comments he made recently, and throughout the season.

That’s explained in the ESPN writeup from Jeff Borzelllo:

He made headlines before Maryland’s first-round NCAA tournament game against Grand Canyon when he essentially broke the news of Maryland athletic director Damon Evans leaving for SMU and explained why he hasn’t signed a new contract in College Park.

“I need to make fundamental changes to the program,” Willard said. “That’s what I’m focused on right now. That’s why probably a deal hasn’t got done because I want to see — I need to see fundamental changes done. I want this program to be great. I want it to be the best in the country, I want to win a national championship, but there’s things that need to change.

“I need to make sure that we are where we are with NIL, and rev share is not where we’ve been with NIL over the past two years. We’ve been one of the worst, if not lowest, in the NIL in the last two years. So, that’s first and foremost. I also have to make a fundamental change where I can do the things that I want to do with my program. I wanted to spend an extra night in New York this year to celebrate Christmas with my team and I was told that we can’t do that because it’s too expensive. So, I don’t know how we can be a top-tier program and I can’t spend one extra night in New York because it’s too expensive.”

And then after the Sweet 16 loss to Florida he told reporters he didn’t know what his next step was, essentially being non-committal to his future in College Park when everyone knew Nova was a formality at that point.

So the CliffsNotes is that the guy is a total jerk, but when you think about it, Villanova could use some of that. We just went through three underwhelming, boring, insipid years of Kyle Neptune, who was hand-picked to be Jay Wright’s successor. That didn’t work. Now here comes a guy who’s a bit of a dickhead, but wins games. That’s the formula for many successful college coaches in any sport, be it John Calipari, Kim Mulkey, Jim Boeheim, and Bobby Knight. Maybe if Kyle Neptune threw a chair across the floor, Villanova would have played better in the second half.


You ask yourself if it’s on-brand for Villanova to bring in a former Seton Hall scumbag. It is not. Wright was a wonderful, well-dressed, classy coach, and his teams BATTLED Willard’s Pirates. But there aren’t many Jay Wrights out there. He may actually be the only one. So do you want to win games, or run the country’s most honorable program while finishing 15-15? Most people would pick the former over the latter, especially in the cutthroat world of NIL that Jay Wright didn’t have to navigate when he won that pair of titles. As icky as the college sports ecosystem is right now, it’s an ecosystem you have to embrace, like it or not.

And hey, maybe if Willard gets what he wants on the Main Line, then he doesn’t give these loaded, whiny soundbites to the press. The Terp fans absolutely loathe the guy for the way it ended, and you can’t blame them, but at least Willard won’t be boring. He won a bunch of Big East games and went to five tournaments with the Pirates, so maybe he turns this around at Nova, or maybe he flames out in spectacular fashion and gives us some great blog posts to write.